Writing

Writers’ Bumps: An Endangered Condition?

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Photo by Jak of the Mast Cells & Collagen Behaving Badly blog.

The picture above of the middle finger is not me flipping you off. It’s not even my finger. I found it on this blog (which has now gone private). I am featuring it here because it shows a writer’s bump, which is something I, and many other writers have.

These bumps are formed from the pressure of a pen or pencil pushing against the middle finger when a person is writing. If you’re right-handed, it will form on your right hand. If you’re left-handed, it will form on your left.

I once asked a manicurist if she could ever tell what profession a person has from looking at their hands. She had never considered it. Then I told her about how to spot a writer from their bump. I’m sure she was edified forever by this information and it changed how she approached her job.

I realized the other day that my writer’s bump is much smaller than it used to be, presumably because I hardly ever use a pen anymore, opting instead for a computer keyboard. This caused me some dismay since I rather like my writer’s bump and the distinction it gives my profession.

Then, I realized in horror that most young people probably don’t have a writer’s bump. They might not even know what one is since they all use phone and computer keyboards.

Truly, writers’ bumps are endangered. We just can’t stand by and let them disappear. They have been with society for hundreds of years. Somebody should do something about this. We need a public information campaign to “Save the Writers’ Bumps!”

Where is the outrage? Why are we complacent with the disappearance of this badge of honor earned by hours of slaving over paper with a writing utensil?

Cast aside your computer keyboards and your phones my friends. Start a movement!

(Smirk. I think not. I actually love the convenience and speed of typing.)

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If you enjoy my blog, you’ll love my book! Meander North showcases 51 of the best stories from this blog about my quirky life in northern Minnesota and my writerly pursuits. It earned a silver Midwest Book Award in 2023 for nature writing and was published by Nodin Press in Minneapolis. It is available for $19.95 through their distributor at this link.

How a Print Writer With a Lisp Turns to Radio

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Tools of the trade for the Twin Ports Newspaper of the Air.

On a recent Sunday morning, I faced a test of my skills when I led a radio broadcast for the Twin Ports Newspaper of the Air (TPNA) for the first time. This is a service of the Lighthouse Center for Vision Loss in Duluth. I am one of about seventy volunteers who read local newspapers every morning for two hours over a closed-circuit radio system for people who can’t read the newspaper themselves. Some are blind and some have had strokes and can no longer hold a newspaper.

Now, if you know me, you realize that getting up early on a weekend morning is definitely not in my character. But I enjoy reading the Sunday paper. I was looking for an organization to volunteer for, and because I have a background in audio work, this just seemed sort of fun.

Once a month, I haul myself out of bed at 6 a.m. and head down to the Lighthouse Center. We have two copies of the newspaper and read in teams of two, switching off every other story. The leader opens the broadcast, keeps track of time, reads public service announcements and the weather forecast, and has final say on which stories get read.  All the other person needs to do is read their assigned stories. It’s much easier not to be the leader!

We don’t have time to read everything in the paper, so we concentrate on news listeners can’t hear elsewhere – the local stories. Other broadcasts focus on national stories, so we don’t need to read those. The obituaries are a big draw, so we are required to read them at the top of the hour. Some people tune in just for those.

It’s tricky because the broadcast is live. If you mess up something, you need to muddle through the best you can. If you have a coughing fit, you need to run out of the room and cough outside, with your partner taking over instead. If you need to pee, you have to hold it until it’s your partner’s turn to read a longer story so that you have enough time to go.

20180318_080050None of these things have happened to me yet, although I did lose track of a story once. With all the story page jumps in the newspaper, it can be confusing to know which page to find it on. Thankfully, my partner noticed my confusion and handed me his copy of the article.

Besides having to overcome my natural weekend laziness, another reason this volunteer job is a challenge is because of the speech impediment I had as a child. In elementary school, while my classmates were out playing during recess, I was sitting in a room with four or five other children, practicing my “s”es.

I wasn’t aware I had a lisp until I got singled out for Speech Class. In fact, when I first heard about the class from my teacher, I thought it involved learning how to stand up in front of people and give speeches. I imagined that might be sort of fun.

It wasn’t until I started going to the class that I understood it involved the drudgery of practicing how to speak correctly. Once a week, we would sit around a table, concentrating on how our tongue moved in our mouths. I needed to learn to redirect the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth when speaking, instead of thrusting it forward against the back of my front teeth.

We practiced tongue-twisters and were drilled on certain sounds over and over again until we got it right. I don’t recall how many weeks I was in Speech Class, but I must have made progress because I was able to rejoin my classmates full-time.

My foray into audio began years later in graduate school, when I decided that learning how to do a radio show would be a more interesting capstone project than writing yet another article.

Some nice ladies at KUMD Radio (Thanks Christine Dean! Thanks Lisa Johnson!) were willing to show me how to record and work with the files, and I produced a pre-recorded series called Listening to the Lake, which had public health and environmental themes.

I found my “radio voice,” and this led to a later series called Superior Science News on KUWS Radio, which was produced by Dani Kaeding. Lo and behold, nobody complained about my “s”es.

Along the way, I got to see these radio professionals at work, and always marveled at their ability to simultaneously load CDs, remember to announce the time, and find the day’s weather forecast to read.

Now here I was, groggy on a Sunday morning, put to the test to see if I measured up to my radio lady role models.

I’m happy to report that everything came off without a hitch. They, and my speech teacher, would have been proud.

Creativity, Motherhood and Rats: How They All Go Together

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Mom rat and baby

Image by Howcast.com.

I was asked to give a short talk today on creativity and motherhood for a local organization. Here’s the result:

When I became pregnant with my first child 26 years ago, I started to panic. It wasn’t that I was afraid something would be wrong with my baby or that I was afraid of the labor process — although these are justified fears and I did think about those things.

The real issue was, I was afraid that the idea I had for a novel would be subsumed by the demands of a newborn. Having a child would strike a death-knell for my creative dreams. My story would never see the light of day. I had floundered around with writing it, and had come to the realization that I needed help. This fear was foremost in my mind when I signed up for a novel-writing correspondence course offered by Writer’s Digest Magazine soon after I found I was pregnant.

I had heard all the cultural messages that tell women that being creative and having children are incompatible, and I believed them.

The novel-writing course provided me with structure that saw me through the rest of my pregnancy and motivated me to keep working on the story once I had my baby boy. The instructor’s encouragement also helped.

Even so, it took me a long time to finally finish my novel and to get it published — as long as it takes to grow a child into adulthood.

The thing that held me back wasn’t motherhood, it was waiting for the right moment to feel creative – the moment when I wasn’t busy, stressed, or emotional. I was too much at the whim of my outside life. I hadn’t learned yet how to control my inner life and allow room for the creativity to flow no matter what was happening “outside.”

A recent article in The Atlantic Monthly magazine backs up the premise that having children does not harm creativity. In fact, it can change the biology of the mother in ways that can allow for even greater creativity.

Kelly Lambert, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Richmond, studies the maternal brains of rats. Yes, on Mother’s Day, I am going to talk to you about rats, and their brains, no less. Lambert found that when rats become mothers, their brains, which are closer in structure to a human’s than even those of mice or dogs, start reprogramming themselves.

Their sensory and motor systems sharpen. Their circuitry becomes more efficient. Maternal rats are more direct and lethal hunters, catching their prey four times faster than non-mom rats.

Even after having their babies, the changes persist. Lambert found that the mother rats experience less memory decline in old age and have quicker navigation skills than non-mothers, outsmarting them in mazes.

Although neuroscientists do not yet understand what direct impact pregnancy and childbirth have on the human maternal brain and creativity, I am here to testify that, yes, it is possible to be a mother and be creative, too. And I’m sure plenty of other women can testify to this. It’s just that sometimes when you’re a parent, you have to find more creative ways to allow for that creativity.

If you have a partner, have them take care of the kids for a while so that you can go on a writing retreat. Don’t allow your creativity to take a back seat to the other demands of life. Try different things until you find something that works for you.

I learned how to make this inner creative space while I wrote my second novel. Even though I had a second child by this time, after reading a story about right-brain, left-brain thinking and how to make both sides of your brain work together to foster creativity, I learned how to put myself in that elusive creative mind zone, instead of waiting for the zone to come to me. Thanks to this, it only took me two years to write and publish the second one.

You don’t need to be superhuman to have children and to be creative. Mothers have been doing it forever. As the magazine article said, creativity takes time and periods of reflection, and a willingness to let go of ideas that don’t work and move on to better ones.

Learning to look at the world through the eyes of your children, be they yours biologically or children of your heart, is not a bad way to make your own thinking more flexible.

A Funny Thing Happened at Bent Paddle Taproom . . .

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Laura Mullen, co-owner of Bent Paddle Brewery, introduces Deborah and James Fallows to writers in Duluth, Minnesota. James holds up their new book, “Our Towns.”

Yesterday, I meandered over to the new taproom of one of Duluth’s noted microbreweries, Bent Paddle, even though I don’t like beer (I know, gasp).

Amongst other local literati, I listened to a panel discussion in the brewery’s back room about how to apply for arts grant funding. The event was hosted by Lake Superior Writers, a group that fosters the literary scene in these parts.

The panel was sooooo interesting. Four writers and one person from an arts granting agency shared their experiences and insights. I now feel less intimidated by the idea of applying for one of these grants, should I ever be so inclined.

During the intermission, the coolest thing happened. Just by chance and happenstance, James Fallows, a long-time writer for The Atlantic Magazine was in the taproom, filming a segment for CBS News Sunday Morning. The segment will promote a new book he wrote with his wife Deborah, called “Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America.”

Deborah was with him, too, and when they heard from the owner (Laura Mullen) that a bunch of writers were in the back room, they HAD to come speak with us. Although it was hard to hear them over the din of the taproom, here’s what I gleaned.

James first came to Duluth to do a story about Cirrus Aircraft, a local company that makes private planes, which deploy their own parachute in times of peril. He also became familiar with Bent Paddle Brewery, which was just starting up at the time. Then he and Deborah had an idea for a book project that would allow them to take the social pulse of America as it stands now. In their own Cirrus plane, they flew to a dozen cities for their research, concentrating on ones that weren’t too large like Greenville, South Carolina; Columbus, Missouri; Burlington, Vermont; Fresno, California; and Duluth, of course.

When asked, James and Deborah said their favorite cities on their tour were the ones with “heart.” They included Duluth in this list. And they said they were so glad to see that the brewery was thriving. James offered us intel on what the Atlantic is publishing these days and even gave us his email address in case we have story ideas to pitch.

How cool is that?!

In preparation for the book’s release on May 8, they had decided to come back to Bent Paddle to film the promo segment. They also filmed in Greenville. The segment will air on CBS Sunday Morning on May 6.

I suspect I unwittingly got filmed for it earlier in the evening when I followed another writer to where the taproom offers three different kinds of water on tap (sparkling, ambient and chilled). We were talking about short stories. When we turned around from the water taps, we were met with the glare of camera lights and shadowy cameramen behind them.

We didn’t think much of it, continuing on our writerly ways, trying to look nonchalant. But after the event was over, I excitedly told my writer friend that our backs might be on national television! Can’t wait to see if we made the cut.

It just goes to show, you never know what can happen when you follow your passions, and that good things can happen in a brewery, even for people who prefer wine over beer.

An Evening Dog Walk

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I had the honor recently of reading an excerpt from a creative nonfiction story that was published in a local literary journal, the Thunderbird Review. The event took place at the Fon du Lac Tribal and Community College in Cloquet, Minnesota, and the story is called “An Evening Dog Walk.” It’s a poignant tale of a neighborhood dog walk and dating at 50.

Here’s what I read:

We lived a block and a half away from each other in a northern Minnesota town on the shores of Lake Superior.

When I first saw him in my old neighborhood, he was lying on the kitchen floor of his home, puttering with a repair under the sink. I spoke with his wife, a freelance graphic designer, about a publication project I had for her.

From differing heights, he and I exchanged hellos, and that was it.

About five years ago, we met for the second time in our new neighborhood. I was walking my dog past his house, which was a block and a half away from mine again. His house was recently built, and I had been wondering who lived in the impressive structure. While he was taking envelopes out of his mailbox, I reintroduced myself.

During the next five minutes, he spilled his woes to me: his wife had died from some awful form of cancer, a relative died yesterday, he was experiencing mechanical failures at home, and he had just recovered from the flu.

Stunned by his outpouring, I wished him well, and my dog and I continued our walk.

About a year later, I turned around in my church pew and he was sitting behind me. I reintroduced myself. His sparkling blue eyes and Joe Biden smile told me he was doing better.

He asked me to stay for coffee after the service, and our friendship began. He admitted he didn’t remember our previous encounter because he had been so upset. But he was excited to meet someone who knew his former wife and had lived in both of his neighborhoods.

It wasn’t long before we started dating. Even though he was 14 years older, we shared similar philosophies, the same neighborhood, and he loved my dog – a golden doodle too friendly for his own good.

I felt I could trust him. I felt the stomach butterflies.

Kissing didn’t come easy for him. I was the first woman he had kissed since his wife died. We were on my back porch after a dog walk and I could tell he wanted to kiss me, but after some fumbling, he ended up kissing my cheek instead. We joked about it the next time we met, and on his subsequent try, he hit the lip bullseye.

He took me flying in his small private plane, showed off the audio system in the living room of his comfortable home – a home that still contained his deceased wife’s decorating touches in every room – and he solicited my help in fixing his leaky sailboat. He even kept up with me hiking and biking around the neighborhood.

As a twice-divorcée struggling to recapture some sense of normalcy and connection, he was just what I needed. And he seemed happy to have someone to do things with once again . . . .

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If you’d like to find out what happened in the rest of the story, please support the journal and purchase a copy for $5. You can find info on how to do that here.

Writing for Money (Yes, it is possible!)

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I took part in a public panel recently at the Duluth Public Library. The topic was “Writing for Money,” and the panel featured three other local writers besides myself. It was sponsored by Lake Superior Writers, and facilitated by Felicia Schneiderhan, noted writer in her own right.

The audience was comprised of mostly writers who work for “free” and writers who currently receive pay. A few writer-wanna-bes were sprinkled throughout. I suspect everyone walked away with some new ideas to pursue — including me, who has been in this business for way too long.

Local blogger, Ed Newman, wrote this post about the panel in his blog, Ennyman’s Territory. Newman, a former PR man for Amsoil (a synthetic motor oil company), is also an artist, writer and culture buff who gets around to all the local arts events and shares his insights.

Hosting free panels like this are a valuable public service. This is the second of three planned by Lake Superior Writers. The next will focus on arts grant writing.

 

Author Reading on Wisconsin Public Radio

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Writers from Duluth who participated in the “Writers Read” contest reading included (left to right) Lucie Amundsen, Maddie Cohen, Avesa Rockwell, Molly Hoeg, Felicia Schneiderhan, myself and Carol Dunbar. Missing is Liz Minette.

I was one of 19 writers from Duluth and northern Wisconsin who were chosen to read for a contest organized by Northland College around the theme of “gut instinct.” (For details on the contest, please see my previous post.)

My reading of the nonfiction story, “Book Signings can be Hazardous to Your Health,” aired today on Wisconsin Public Radio. You can find the link to the program here. My story starts at the 4:10-minute mark. Apparently, I am such a potty mouth that they had to bleep out one of my words. 🙂

 

How my Blog Helped me Win a Writing Contest

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Northland College in northern Wisconsin holds an annual writing contest organized around a specific theme. Chosen writers have the opportunity to read their poems, essays or short stories in front of an audience. Plus, for the past couple of years, the readings are broadcast on Wisconsin Public Radio.

The theme last year for the Writer’s Read Contest was “The Dark Side.” I wasn’t going to enter because I didn’t feel like I had anything that fit the theme.

That is my strategy – I rarely write anything new for contests. I like to choose from pieces I’ve already written. I guess I’m lazy that way, or efficient. Take your pick!

A nice thing about this contest is that, unlike most writing competitions, they will accept stories that have been previously published. So you can recycle works that have appeared elsewhere or won other contests.

However, a friend encouraged me last year to “add my voice into the mix,” so I entered a couple of stories even though I didn’t think they fit the theme. My stories were not chosen.

This year, after learning that the theme was “Gut Instinct,” I performed a mental inventory of all my short stories, poems, and blog entries to see if I had anything that fit. I have learned from conducting writing contests myself that the nonfiction essay category usually has the fewest entries, so I decided to concentrate on my blog posts to increase my chances of being chosen to read.

A couple of postings came to mind, but one I wrote in 2013 was especially dramatic. It was called “Are Book Signings Worth Risking Your Personal Safety?” It detailed two run-ins I had with a robber when I was in college, and it also dealt with writing, so I hoped it would be appealing to the judges and to the listening audience. How did it fit the theme? My gut told me to run the robber over. My brain told me otherwise. Which one did I listen to?

However, I needed to make the story even more dramatic, so I rewrote the blog post. I also had a writer friend (the same one who encouraged me to enter last year) look at the story and offer comments before I submitted it. She had some good ideas for rearranging the middle and for adding more details, which I heeded. In return, I offered comments on the fiction story she planned to enter.

Lo and behold, both of us were chosen to read! The event is happening later this week and our stories will be broadcast at a later date. (I will be sure to post a link here when that happens.) (Here’s the link! My story starts at the 4:10 minute mark.)

I’ve toyed with the idea of writing my blog for money. But the whole reason I started it was to write for fun, and to try and make sense out of my life — and perhaps share some wisdom. So I have refrained from blog-writing-for-profit. However, now I have discovered that blog writing can also help a person win a writing contest! How cool is that?

The Year in Blogging, 2017

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This was my favorite image from 2017. I took it at the beginning of the March for Science, which happened in Duluth, Minn. I call it “Standing Strong for Science.”

My fifth year as a blogger has come to a close. I hear in the blog-o-sphere that such longevity is unusual. Most bloggers only maintain their efforts for a year or two. What can I say?  I keep doing it because I keep coming up with stories to tell and places to visit. I don’t have any goals other than sharing my stories. Well, there might be a bit of book promotion in there, but I try to keep that to a minimum. Oh, and there’s also that time I tried to save my job, but more about that later…

In 2017, my blog saw the most traffic so far. It had over 4,500 visitors and over 6,100 views. I’m sure part of that is because there’s more content so my blog shows up in more searches, but I’d also like to think it’s because people find what I have to say of interest and of use.

I’m sure if I was active on more social media channels, I could up those numbers. But upping numbers is not my goal, it’s just a nice side-benefit of telling stories.

Here are the most popular stories for the year:

# 1 Why Sea Grant is a Kick Ass Program (And Not Just Because I Work There) – This was my plea for people to contact their congressional representatives to save the federal program that employs me. The post got shared widely among my colleagues and friends, and guess what? It worked! We all still have our jobs with an organization that works to study and protect one of our most basic requirements of survival: water.

Not only was this post the most popular for 2017, but for the entire time I’ve been blogging.

Congress ignored the President’s budget cut for us, and even gave us a little bit of a raise. It’s nice to know that your country values you. Alas, the president has zeroed out our budget once again for next year, but I’m not freaking out because the Sea Grant leadership suspects that congress will keep us in the budget as before.

Anyway, thank you for the support you all provided!! It means a lot.

#2 Iams Dog Food Alert!—This story didn’t take off right away like the Sea Grant one did. Its popularity is unfortunately based on the fact that many dogs other than mine have had bad reactions to the sneaky changes this company made in the recipe of their dog food. This is one story I wish wasn’t popular, but more and more people keep finding it though searches. I am glad the story is providing them with answers, but sorry that their dogs are having problems.

#3 Minnesota Singer/Songwriter Jacob Mahon – This is a short post that I whipped out in about 10 minutes after seeing a new Duluth-based musician. I suspect part of its appeal is that it was short and to the point, plus the guy is good! The story was shared by several people, which helped lead to its popularity. Go Jacob!

#4 and #5 The Lake, it is Said, Never Gives Up Her Dead and Remembering Black Sunday in Duluth – I group these two together because they are about the same topic, and because they follow each other in popularity. Fifty years ago, three of my cousins drowned in Lake Superior. The stories are about the incident and a special ceremony that was held on the lake in their honor and to remember the people who tried to rescue them. They serve as a reminder of how powerful this lake can be.

#6 Challenge: Describe Your Community in One Word – This story, which I wrote in 2014, describes the efforts of myself and a friend to find one word that describes the people who make up Duluth, Minnesota. I’ve noticed that this story pops up in a lot of searches, especially from the Philippines. I suspect there’s a school teacher there who is giving his/her students the assignment of coming up with one word for their city or country. My blog has probably been plagiarized for many a school paper, but that’s okay with me!

Thank you for meandering with me, and Happy New Year wherever you may be . . .